Pakistan to Produce Gas - by Burning Underground Coal

As we start a new year, consider the miserable plight of the average Pakistani
electricity consumer.

With about 50 per cent less electricity generation capability than the actual
demand, Pakistan's National Grid is facing more than a 5,000-megawatt shortfall
in power generation, leading to blackouts in both urban and rural areas of
the country. Due to unscheduled shortages by the National Power Control Center,
urban areas are facing unscheduled minimum 8-hour power blackouts each day,
while in rural areas the blackouts can last as long as 14 hours.

The situation is equally miserable in the country's compressed natural gas
(CNG) sector, which is now facing three days per week suspension of gas deliveries,
the country's textile sector -four days a week, while the gas supply to non-textile
industry has been suspended for indefinite period.

Scrambling to exploit virtually any indigenous sources of energy, officials
in the capital Islamabad are now pinning their hopes on the Thar Underground
Coal Gasification (UCG) pilot project, situated in the Tharparkar desert in
Sindh eastern Pakistan.

Underground coal gasification converts coal to gas while still in the coal
seam, where injection wells are drilled and used to supply the oxidants to
ignite and fuel the underground combustion process, with separate production
wells used to bring the product gas to surface. The high pressure combustion
is conducted at temperatures of 1,290-1,650 degrees Fahrenheit, but can reach
up to 2,730 degrees Fahrenheit. The process produces carbon monoxide and dioxide,
hydrogen and methane.

Advantages claimed for the Thar UCG project include the fact that, as the
coal is burnt 600 feet under the ground, threat of environmental pollution
is minimized. In addition, as the coal is processed in situ rather than being
dug out and brought to the earth's surface to be burnt to generate electricity,
UCG will minimize electricity generating costs, projected to be $0.04538 to
$0.05673 per kilowatt hour, as opposed to current costs at $0.11345 to $0.13614
per kilowatt hour.

And all that is required to make this energy miracle happen is for the federal
government to provide an additional $100 million in funding to generate electricity
from the project as soon as possible, which will then reportedly allow the
Thar UCG project to supply 100 megawatts of electricity annually to the national
power grid by December 2013. According to Dr. Muhammad Saleem, director of
the Thar UCG project, only $9.1 million has been spent on the Thar's UCG development
so far.

Science and Technology Planning Commission member Samar Mubarakmand said that
Pakistan's coal reserves are sufficient to provide electricity to the nation
for more than 30 years.

But the Thar UCG project has its critics. A number of professional chemical
engineers and petrochemical experts, speaking on condition of anonymity, have
collectively voiced their concerns, particularly about the non-technical specialist
management of the project, noting, "The huge energy and petrochemical potential
of Thar is wholly dependent on the success of its pilot project and if the
non-technical management of this plan does not remove the project's flaws,
the country would ultimately be deprived of these huge underground assets forever.
You can imagine what can happen if any pilot project fails solely due to a
lack of knowledge and expertise ...

usually, every oil and gas company first does rigorous tests on oil and gas
wells to determine the composition of the gas and oil and then build the multi-million
dollar facility. This is the very first step but in the UCG project the team
does not know anything about the composition of the gas and yet they want to
build a facility. They are only spending lot of money...".

Visionary project for Pakistan's energy future or enterprise doomed to failure
by inept crony management? Pakistani electricity customers will remain figuratively
and literally in the dark until these questions are definitely answered.

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